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The present invention relates to enclosures for electronic equipment and more particularly to a modular and expandable enclosure particularly suited for prototyping or limited production applications.
During the development of electronic equipment, prototypes are typically developed to assure that the equipment works in the intended manner. Often, a need exists to house electronics under development in a prototype enclosure during this development phase. As a result of the diverse nature and size of electronic equipment that may be developed within an organization, the sizes of the enclosures needed for different prototyping applications may vary considerably in height.
Vendors will provide custom enclosures for prototype applications, however, the development of custom enclosures for prototype applications can be both costly and introduce undesirable delays into the development process. Often, suppliers of custom enclosures seek significant tooling charges for the manufacture of such enclosures.
Some enclosures are commercially available for prototype applications. One such enclosure is identified as the CLS-625 series from PAC-TEC. The PAC-TEC enclosure includes a bottom cover, a top cover, side filler panels and front and rear panels. The front and rear panels must be particularly sized for the particular height of the desired enclosure. Thus, if multiple sizes of enclosures are desired, different sizes of front and rear panels must be maintained in inventory or procured.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have an enclosure design for electronic equipment which can easily grow in size depending upon the particular needs of the electronic equipment under development and which minimizes the number of parts which must be inventoried to support diverse enclosure heights.
A modular enclosure for electronic equipment is disclosed which facilitates assembly of an equipment enclosure of a desired height. The enclosure consists of a lid, a base and optionally, one or more intermediate frame members that may be disposed between the lid and the base. The lid and base may be assembled one to the other to form a minimum height enclosure. To obtain enclosures of greater height than the minimum height, one or more intermediate frame members are interposed between the lid and the base.